Dr. Conrad Murray Found Guilty

What position? I'm not shifting any position.

I have gone from talking about a criminal trial, which is over, to civil actions which are now pending. These are quite different legal proceedings, brought for quite different reasons, and brought by different parties, although they both involve Conrad Murray.

I don't really think so. People from AEG testified at the criminal trial and made it quite clear they had not wanted to hire Murray and it was Jackson who insisted they do so. They wanted to hire a doctor in London to attend to MJ's medical needs. So, blaming AEG for Murray's behavior in regard to Jackson isn't going to fly, unless they can prove that AEG was aware of what Murray was doing, and the risk it posed to Jackson, and they continued to retain him. There is also the interesting additional factor that Jackson never signed the contract with AEG that involved Dr. Murray, which is the reason Murray never got paid for his two months of providing "medical services" to MJ. So, technically, there was no existing legal relationship between AEG and Conrad Murray.

The guilty verdict came from 12 jurors, and those 12 people are in no way involved in any money motive regarding these civil cases. They decided a criminal verdict, based on the evidence presented in a criminal trial, which hinged on appropriate standards of medical care and the issue of Conrad Murray's criminal negligence in failing to adhere to such standards.

Do you even know what ambulance chasing is? You're certainly not using the term correctly in this context.
This is not a case where the lawyers solicited business--members of the Jackson family sought out and retained attorneys. And the fees those attorneys receive in a civil settlement is determined and fixed by law, and, if they are not successful in obtaining a verdict and monetary award in favor of their client, or a financial settlement beforehand, they don't get paid.

The civil action against AEG is going to involve disclosure of MJ's significant financial distress. The public assumed MJ had a lot of money, when, in fact, he was actually close to being financially destitute and very close to losing his remaining assets because he was $400 million in debt. His clear, rather desperate, need for money allowed him to be manipulated, and exploited, by a number of people surrounding him, including those from AEG, who pushed him from an initial commitment to do a 10 show tour, which was his initial desire, into a 50 show obligation which may have posed a crushing burden for him to contemplate. And taking advantage of MJ's well known problem with prescription drugs, and possibly using that drug problem to gain leverage and control over him, by even helping to supply him with a physician drug-pusher, would be part of that conspiracy involving AEG that the suit alleges.

So, while the outcome of the civil suits does involve money, another purpose is to try to expose a great deal of behind the scenes maneuvering and exploitation of Jackson, in order to try to show that Jackson was victimized by these people, and AEG, in a way that directly contributed to his death. These are wrongful death suits.

If one is interested in either Michael Jackson's affairs, or drug use, or business dealings, or all the backstage intrigue involved with them, then the forthcoming revelations of these civil actions will probably be fascinating, although also unflattering to Jackson's image. But I'm not sure that the general public, or even most of Jackson's fans, will really be interested in this sort of thing. I don't expect a great deal of media attention to focus on these matters for that reason.

Jackson's mother and children have a vested interest in keeping his image alive because that contributes to the money-making capacity of his estate, of which they are the primary beneficiaries. And Jackson has earned considerably more money dead than he was doing when he was alive. But, they are also the most aggrieved parties in terms of his untimely death, both because of their close emotional ties to him, as well as the fact he was their primary means of support while he was living. So they have quite legitimate reasons for bringing a civil suit against anyone they believe caused his wrongful death.

It's the same old spiel ff. Not one thing in it that any of us need to be told.

I have just seen a Channel 4 interview with Dr Murray. The same spiel was going off in the interviewer's mind. Then he used the phrase "standards of practice" and Dr Murray reflexed with an eye-roller obviously caused by how tiresome this line is coming from people who know nothing about such a relationship as this one was and are just using hindsight that MJ died to focus on the dotting of every "i" and the crossing of every "t", a proceeding which would bring doctoring to a standstill and, as a bonus, increase demand for medical staff recruited from that class of persons who belong to the ever expanding middle class who are in their element when crossing every "i" and dotting every "t". A classic example of this aggregate of persons which has only itself left to bite chunks out of for the reasons I gave earlier and "saving lives" is the unanswerable argument in a nation of frightened people which sees it as a clincher.

That stuff must be pretty tiresome to somebody who has had MJ screaming at him to the effect that "look Doc, I'm not a ******* truck driver who cant get to sleep because his wife overspent one of the cards and the bank fined them 200 bucks. I'm on a collision course with 50 sold-out ******* concerts in London and I'm scared. I'm really ******* scared. If I **** up the **** hits. This is the big time-- not some general hospital in the wrong end of Pittsburg where the nuns go around reassuring everyone. I'm up the stick for $400 big ones and you're up the stick for 800 little ones. What's the difference!!! This is what it's like at the top. I'm the ******* king of pop dontcha know? It says so in the sheets. We're two guys in a lifeboat. If we get to land we're in the clear and to get there I have to do these 50 ******* concerts and your job is to get me there. **** the risks. The way I feel right now Barack Obama could race me up a flight of steps. Ya dig Doc? What I'm saying. Am I making myself clear? I could get a pedantic, rule-following, instruction reading doctor for half what you're being paid. A quarter maybe. (picks up phone....) Hiyeee--hey--how much does a Joe Soap quack make who can't get in the **** because he has union protection? ... Thanks. A tenth. Right? $150 grand a month plus perks is for taking the heat in the furnace section. Do you know how many people who are dependent on me not ******* up. Have you any idea? I've lost track. I'm a machine. A one man quantitative easing machine for the lot of them. If I seize up the balloon pops. You're the grease monkey. Oil me up. Like Bob said, gimme some milk or else go home".

It's not in instruction books and manuals because they are written to take account of the lowest common denominator idiot. It's man to man stuff. If it goes wrong the bottom feeders espy carrion and won't allow for that man to man shite in case the carrion springs back into life. Man to man has primacy in my book over doctor/patient. And MJ took a risk that Dr Murray was the right man.

The end of the interview took the gump by surprise. He stupidly asked whether Dr Murray would do anything different with hindsight and Dr Murray stood up saying "part two" and walked off. There was no part two.

A GOOD, ETHICAL doctor would have gone home.

Sure, spendi. It is all right to kill a patient, so long as you are doing what the patient asks of you and getting handsome rewards. That the law prohibits much of what it is you are doing to the patient is a side issue that ought not be considered in the final summing up.

Not.

I wonder who was ultimately responsible for getting MJ into the zombistic state where a chemical cocktail of propofol would bump him off. This was not a single transgression of his oaths of which Dr Murrya was guilty. He was a career "shoppingdoctor" who sold all his ethics for a monthly fee and expenses.

MJ needed to be weaned off all this **** under proper medical supervision. HE needed an intervention, not an enabler with a medical degree

You can take the "we are all equal under the law" bullshit to the point where the legal profession is running the medical profession. I understand that some medical men are warning about that as a result of this verdict.

I think you have all taken a position on the case too early in the piece and got married to it. Now your pride is causing you to stick to it doggedly for fear of realising that what you had blurted out on the instant was dangerous crap. Pride isn't the No 1 vice for nothing.

You're hiding in the small print.

Who Killed Davey Moore?

If I need any views from you Id have to get hammered first

Well- Who Killed Davey Moore is a bit of a challenge fm and we all know your tried and tested method of avoiding any of those. Bombast.

You came on a site called Able to Know to expose yourself to the views of others didn't you. A2K is not a one-way megaphone.

I know what you are saying. Over medication by entertainers is pretty common. There must be a culture of medicators insinuating their way in. I acknowledge that MJ may have been a lost cause before he employed Murray. Certainly, Murray is catching the flack for all of his ilk, these days. I'm merely insisting that Murray jumped on the gravy train, when he ought to have backed away, or else actually tried to help the man.

I don't know how it is possible to misunderstand the situation as crassly as you lot are doing. Once you start dope testing for performance enhancement there's a collision between performers and their medical teams and the law enforcement. Human nature collides with tweeting automatons safely ensconced in the webs that they weave and immune from any criticism and feeding their greed for money or excuses to parade their empty virtues. Preferably both.

YEP.

It doesn't matter what Dr. Murray's reasons were for giving Michael those drugs. It doesn't matter that MJ pressured him to give him the drugs. You might be giving reasons for Dr. Murray's actions but you aren't giving anything that justifies what he did.

From what I've read (some time ago), his drug problems originated when he suffered burns from the Pepsi ad. I think I saw him interviewed, as well, where he said that. He was in quite a bit of pain. My mother was burned quite badly in a fire, as well, and was on pain meds for a couple of years, and I have seen how painful they were for her. Depending on the degree - how many layers of skin were affected, plus the size of the area involved, it can take a long time for the pain to subside.

I agree. Murray was simply the doctor left holding the bag, literally--the IV bag. But, the other physicians who were inappropriately prescribing for Jackson didn't kill him--they weren't as grossly, and criminally, negligent as Murray, they didn't directly and immediately jeopardize Jackson's life to the extent Murray did. The bag Murray was left holding contained a substance Murray should never have been fooling around with in the first place, particularly under the conditions he was using it. He went far beyond the area of his own medical competence, and then acted extremely negligently to boot.

Of course Murray jumped on that gravy train, but then he drove that train with such extreme recklessness that he crashed it. As you point out, he had other options.

We need to restart the rape thread Firefly as I hate it when I find myself agreeing with you.

And they are coached to smash into each other egged on by thousands of howling fans. And they are nowhere near the heat MJ was in. He was in Icarus mode.

You're all giving your virtuous indignation a gentle jog around the park. I don't know how anybody can engage in an intelligent conversation with you.

I think he initially became addicted to medications given to him for the pain. But he continued to use/abuse medications, not because of pain, but because he became addicted to them--these drugs are powerfully addictive. He even wrote a song about Demerol.

MJ wasn't just addicted to drugs, he was also addicted to plastic surgery, and really destroyed his nose in the process because he found doctors willing to remove too much cartilage from his nose, for money, where the end result turned out to be disfiguring. The end of his nose was actually crumbling, and one thing his dermatologist, Dr Arnold Klein, was doing for him was trying to repair that damage and build up his nose with cosmetic filler. Unfortunately, Dr. Klein was also shooting him up with very large doses of Demerol.

And MJ couldn't control his spending habits, which is how he wound up in $400 million worth of debt at the end. He indulged his every whim with money he really didn't have once he passed his glory days. He could not stop spending--lavishly.

And he doesn't seem to have had any close intimate relationships with other adults. The two marriages were obvious shams.

This man had a whole host of unresolved psychological and emotional problems, so I'm not surprised he experienced a lot of anxiety, or depression, which were the reason that doctors initially began prescribing anti-anxiety meds, benzodiazepines, for him. But the man also needed psychotherapy, that apparently he never got, to deal with the root causes of his anxiety and depression, so the problems continued, untouched, and he just wound up addicted to all those benzodiazepine drugs the doctors gave him, and continued to supply him with, right up until the morning he died. He needed larger and larger doses of those drugs just to deal with the constant withdrawal effects.

His prescription drug problems may have started with the pain meds for his burns, but they certainly mushroomed far beyond that--with the willing collaboration of the medical profession.

He did do one stint in rehab. Several more stays might have helped to save his life if they had kept him out of the hands of those drug-pushing doctors..

...and those demanding he performs 50 concerts in London to satisfy their own need for a slice of the cake.